The present invention relates to controls for ovens employing gaseous fuel burners and particularly relates to cooking appliances having a plurality of individual gas burners for cooking. Typically in household cooking appliances having open burners on the cooktop and an enclosed burner for the oven utilize rotary control knobs on the shaft of the burner valve for the individual top burners and separate knobs on the shaft of the oven burner valves. Such arrangements have required the oven control valve to thus be located behind the knob control panel. This has required added fuel gas conduits and has thus added cost to the manufacturing in mass production. It has therefore been desired to utilize remotely controlled electrically operated valves for controlling fuel gas flow to oven burners.
Where electrically operated valves have been employed for oven burners used in mass produced household cooking appliances, thermostatically operated switches have been used to cycle the burner valve in response to changes in the oven temperature. This type of arrangement has created problems in designing the oven controls, in order to have the control knob for temperature regulation located on the control console for user convenience and yet provide the thermostatic control of the switch for the valve in response to sensed changes in oven temperature.
Because the sensor must be located in the oven, the remote location of the control knob has complicated the connections to the thermostat.
In order to improve the sophistication of control and simplify the control arrangements and reduce manufacturing cost, it has been desired to employ electronic controls for oven temperature regulation, yet retain the familiar rotary control knob for temperature selection which has acquired widespread user acceptance. The employment of all electronic control for gaseous fuel flow to an oven burner enables the gas valve and thermostat to be located remotely from the user control knob in order to simplify the fuel supply conduits to the oven burners.
The push to unlock and turn actuation of the user control knob has also achieved wide acceptance to provide tactile feedback that of the valve closed or "OFF" setting positions of the rotary control knob and to prevent inadvertent turning of the control.
Thus it has been desired to find a simplified and low cost way of providing push to turn control input for an all electronic control for an oven gas burner system in a manner which is easy to assemble and provides relatively low manufacturing cost in high volume production.